W3C Poll Shows Desire to Continue DNT Talks, as DAA Launches its own DNT Discussions

The poll will inform the working group’s leaders on how the discussions move forward, said W3C Communications Director Ian Jacobs. Recent changes in group leadership and to the discussion procedure prompted co-Chairman Matthias Schunter to open the poll a week after W3C released its “preferred way to continue” (http://bit.ly/1emefYC). That plan is an attempt to “march through the issues one-by-one” said co-Chairman Justin Brookman. Instead of trying “for some grand elusive bargain,” the group will address a small number of issues during weekly Wednesday conference calls and on the public forum (http://bit.ly/IS1ZL9), he said. Stakeholders can propose differing “concrete proposals,” Brookman said, and if one proposal remains unopposed for 14 days, the chairs can declare the issue has reached consensus. The poll is to essentially ask the group, “Are you guys cool with this?” said Brookman, director of Center for Democracy and Technology’s Project on Consumer Privacy.

It’s been a tumultuous two-year process for W3C’s working group, said Brookman, who joined Schunter and Carl Cargill as co-chairs after then-Chairman Peter Swire left the group in August to head President Barack Obama’s intelligence review panel (WID Aug 29 p1). “We've been going back and forth for a couple of years now without anything being decided definitely,” Brookman said. The contention and lack of results has caused some high-profile defections (WID Aug 1 p2), and poll results show more want to leave. “As has been communicated to me by many other [working group] members both publicly and privately, this group is unlikely to reach consensus -- and there is significant risk that the W3C will attempt to force a consensus upon this group,” wrote Alan Chapell, a consultant who helps companies develop privacy and data collection policies. Chapell expressed reservations that even if a significant number of stakeholders supported the option to abandon the group, W3C would still go on. “I (like many others) will be compelled to continue to the extent this [working group] continues to operate,” he wrote.

The W3C discussions are “alive and well and working,” said Jerry Cerasale, Direct Marketing Association senior vice president-government affairs. Yet the DAA talks might offer “a clean start, maybe with a little less baggage,” he said. DMA will contribute to both discussions, as will other WC3 working group members, said Cerasale. “There could be a significant amount of overlap.” Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeffrey Chester said in his poll response that he wanted to withdraw from the WC3 group. He was invited to participate in the DAA talks and hopes to do so, he told us. While he can’t make Thursday’s meeting, Chester said he will meet with colleagues from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group that will participate. “Advocates want to participate wherever we can make progress,” Chester said. “We hope to see a serious DAA proposal on Do Not Track."

Cerasale thinks DAA’s talks will start with a core issue W3C was unable to get consensus on over a year and a half ago: Standardizing a Do Not Track option for Internet users through a discussion with consumer advocates, “the browser community, the advertisers, the network advertisers, the marketers, [and] the publishers of the webpages,” he said. “Putting my consumer hat on, if they can do that, great,” Brookman said. Those are the same issues W3C is still trying to tackle, he said. The group will try to address other divisive issues, said Brookman: To what extent one can use cookies or other unique identifiers, the level of notification a user must receive before being tracked, whether user data can be used for market research, and whether an Internet user can still be tracked even if that information isn’t used to alter the user’s experience. “We've been marching forward,” Brookman said. (cbennett@warren-news.com)